Rationale: To use visual and auditory respresentations
to teach the digraph /ph/

Grade Level: Primary Grade 1

Materials: Pencil, Primary paper, the book,
The Little Engine that Could, a half poster size picture of a train engine
taped to the wall, and pictures of a witch, chair, chattering person, and
a watch taped in a vertical line on the board, a small copy of the engine
for use at the individual student’s desks, and a story of the student’s
choice that is readable and decodable at their reading level.

1. Did you know that Choo-Choo trains
can help you learn to read? How many of you have been on a choo-choo
train? (Teacher entertains comments and stories from the students
one at a time). Let’s together say what a choo-choo train says. Listen
to me first (teacher models the sound and prompts students to join
in). Great job!

2. Today we are going to learn about the
/ch/ sound. The letters c and h together make the sound, “/ch/” (teacher
writes the letters on the board). We are going to learn how to say
the sound /ch/, how to read it, and how to write it together.

3. If a chattering choo-choo says,
“ch-ch-ch-ch”, how does it make that sound? It makes the sound by
putting its teeth together and using the tongue at the roof of its mouth
like this (teacher demonstrates). Now your turn… Now stick your finger in your mouth.
Let’s try and make the sound together. It doesn’t work. When we make the /ch/ sound, in words,
it looks like this (teacher points to the already modeled ch written on
the board). Let’s try and write this together three times on a sheet
of paper.

4. Now I want you to look at the board.
I am going to write four words on the board with the /ch/ sound in them
(teacher has already placed pictures of the word in a verticle line on
the board and writes the words next to them:

Teacher writes:

Chat Chair Witch Watch

As the teacher writes each word, he/she
models the word, emphasizing the sound /ch/ and asks for a response from
the students after each word. Also point out that the /ch/ sound
can come at the beginning of the word, the middle, or at the end of the
word.

5. Write the sentence, “The chattering choo-choo
talks to the watchful engineer as he climbs the mountain.” Ask the
students to help you circle the /ch/ sound in the sentence by asking if
there is a /ch/ sound in this word and if it is at the beginning, middle
or end of the sentence. Watch for students not responding or responding
incorrectly.

6. Read The Little Engine that Could together.
Go back and build a word wall with the students on the board with all the
/ch/ words in it. The word wall should be built on a picture of an
engine.

7. Students will build a word wall of their
own at their desk on a story of their choice. They must circle the
/ch/ sound in words they pick out of their stories for the word wall.
Teacher walks around as students work on their word walls to see if they
are doing it correctly.

8. Let’s see what you remember… What does a choo-choo say? What sound that the choo-choo makes
have we been talking about today?Can this sound be found in the beginning
of a word? The middle of a word? The end of a word?Closure:

Today we learned to make, read, and
write the /ch/ sound. Just like the choo-choo you will have to know
how to make this sound in order to read. You need to be able to see
that when these two letters are together it makes the /ch/ sound and that
this sound can come at any part of a word.